People Who Loved Her
by Leonhart17
Summary: *One Shot* Xander attends Cordelia's funeral and meets the other people who loved her. Set during Angel Season 5 but no spoilers unless you didn't know that Cordy dies... in which case I'm very sorry!


I don't know what prompted this... I wrote it all in one sitting and it's been on my harddrive for weeks and I decided to post it... I'm sure the idea has been done before, but I'd love to hear what you think about it... It's tricky for me to get into Xander's head, so this was interesting for me to write the whole thing in his voice...

Also - I don't know why Spike or Connor aren't there... it just didn't fit to have them in this one...so they aren't... (and because Cordy/Connor was squicky!)

* * *

He didn't think it was right that they held the funeral at night. He knew why, of course, but it still didn't feel right to him. Although, nothing felt very right anymore. It had been years since he'd even seen her, but it didn't keep memories of her out of his head. Cordelia Chase had been quite a woman, even if he had only known her as a girl.

Angel had called last week, had called to tell Buffy that she was gone. He hadn't said dead, but the implication in his voice was enough for the Slayer to get the picture. Xander thought it strange that the call had been for Buffy, who'd never gotten along all that well with the cheerleader, rather than himself, who'd had a relationship with her. Of all of the Scoobies, any calls about Cordelia should have come for him. No one thought of him though, not about things like this. Someone had been hurt, someone died, call Buffy - she'll take care of it - that was how it worked and he knew it.

So why was he the only one from Sunnydale attending the funeral? He straightened his tie as climbed out of his car at the funeral home. Certain attendees made having the funeral in a church impossible. There was a crowd milling around outside the building, lingering in the early evening coolness. Xander walked past them, ducking his head as he entered the building, surprised by the sheer numbers of people packed into the room.

Although, he reflected as he signed the guestbook, Cordy had never had problems with being popular. He jumped as he straightened up to find himself face to face with Harmony. She had obviously been crying but it didn't stop him from recoiling, eyes searching for any wood.

She realized what he was doing and scoffed. "As if I'd bite _you_ Xander Harris!" He relaxed, but moved back as she took a step toward him, apologizing over his shoulder as he bumped into someone. "Will you stop being all twitchy and come with me?" she demanded shrilly.

"Why would I do that Harmony?" he asked, sneering at her and wondering what it was about her that could revert him to high school in seconds. A framed picture caught his eye over Harmony's shoulder, one of those over-airbrushed beauty portraits, but even with the picture's artificial glow around her, Cordelia looked beautiful. He couldn't think of a single second she'd been less than gorgeous and he let out a sigh, his attention snapping back to the present as Harmony huffed at him.

"Angel asked me to find you," the vampire stated, glancing around the room distastefully and it took him a second to realize that the look wasn't for his presence, but rather for the hordes of people around them. "People that actually knew her, people that loved her, are sitting together at the front," she told him, waving over her shoulder as she started dodging through the crowd, leaving him to follow her.

It was much quieter inside the private room, the hush of voices behind them shut off as soon as the funeral director shut the door behind them.

Angel and Wesley were the only people besides Harmony that Xander recognized, and he remembered again how long it had been since he'd known Cordelia.

Wesley noticed him first, pointed him out to Angel, and Xander unconsciously straightened his spine, squaring his shoulders.

"Thanks for coming," Angel said quietly, offering a hand to shake. There was only the briefest of hesitations before he took it, the unnaturally cool skin feeling strange under his fingers.

"Of course," he responded, his voice low. "I'm sorry." He knew even as he spoke that the words didn't mean anything, but it was how people were at funerals and he was determined to play his part.

Angel nodded and Xander could see the heartbreak in the vampire's face, suddenly realizing the depth of the feelings that must have developed between the pair. He wondered if Buffy knew. If she didn't, he wasn't going to be the one to tell her.

Angel and Cordelia. He wondered if she had loved him too, as desperately as he had apparently loved her. If the pain on the ancient vampire's face was any indication, she had.

Xander glanced around the room, uncomfortable with the sudden emotion in the room, more intense than the grief that had been hovering over all of them when he'd entered. He had loved Buffy, Angel had loved Buffy. He had loved Cordelia, Angel had loved Cordelia. As much as he distrusted and disliked the vampire, he couldn't fault their tastes in women.

The carpenter immediately regretted the thought, grateful that he had had the sense not to share it with the others. Wesley offered a hand to him, and Xander shook it, nodding to the other man. While Angel looked the same as always, Wesley had changed dramatically since his departure from Sunnydale. Gone were the pristine suits, the perfectly styled hair, and haughty attitude. Now the best descriptive Xander could find for him was rough around the edges, a series of adjectives he never would have predicted applying to the stuffy former Watcher.

"It's good to see you again," Wesley commented as he let go of Xander's hand. "It's too bad it's for such a sorrowful occasion."

He nodded, swallowing. "It's good to see so many people here. She would have been glad to see that."

Wesley looked around the room. "These are the people she'd have been happy to have here, yourself included." He sighed at the door. "The people out there are work associates, hoping attendance will put them in good with their new bosses," he stated regretfully.

"Lots of people loved Cordy," Xander offered supportively. "Buffy and Willow would have come, but it's pretty tense at home and they can't leave right now. I'm sorry," he stated.

Both men shook their heads, waving off his apology. Xander glanced around the room, seeing a slender girl trying to control her tears on the couch in the room, a black man in a tailored suit sitting beside her. Harmony was crying on the shoulder of a green demon, his arm curled around her shoulder supportively.

These people had loved Cordelia. He could see it in their faces, hear it in their voices, feel it in the air in this room as they gathered to share their grief. Xander might not have known the same woman they had, he'd heard all about Cordelia's seemingly radical personality changes from Willow after her trip to L.A. to put Angel's soul back, but these people had had nothing but good things to say about her, and he regretted not getting to see her again.

There were a lot of things he regretted about the way it had ended with Cordelia, and this final regret, that he'd not come to see her, seemed the worst. A prom dress had gone a long way towards, if not making her like him again, at least hating him a bit less passionately. He wished now that he'd done more. He wished he'd known the amazing person she'd become.

It occurred to him suddenly that he had always known who she would be in the future. Regardless of the fact that he hadn't seen her since graduation, he'd known her well before that, had known for a long time that she wasn't the vapid front she'd presented in school. There were many layers to Cordelia Chase, only seen by the rare individuals inside this room. Cordy presented herself as a confident princess, and she was, but that was only the surface of who she really was.

Looking around the room at these people he didn't know, in the middle of the grief he could only experience in a small portion, he felt suddenly blessed that he had gotten under her shell, had gotten to see the real Cordelia Chase, years before any of these others.

The thought seemed petty even as he thought it. What mattered was that they had all, at one time or another, loved Cordelia deeply.

They had all lost her, him before any of these people. That thought sobered him and he studied the pattern in the carpet as he took a deep breath.

They'd all gotten to see a side of her that he'd only glimpsed. Their friend had been the realization of her potential, her friends' grief speaking volumes about the person she'd grown into.

He was sorry he hadn't gotten to meet her. They could have been friends again, if they had ever been friends before. He felt sudden curiosity to know who she had become, an almost sadistic desire to hear about the woman he'd missed out on.

"Can you tell me about her?" he asked softly, breaking the silence.

It wasn't just Angel or Wesley who looked up at his voice, but all of them, the girl, the man beside her, the demon, and Harmony, all staring at him.

It was the demon who moved first, patting the seat beside him on the couch. "Sit down sugar, and tell us where you want us to start," he offered, the lilting musical tone of his voice doing nothing to mask his pain.

Xander moved on stiff legs to sit next to him. Angel and Wesley each took seats on the arms of the couches, completing the circle, and Xander realized how close this group was as he looked at each of them, drawing support from each other.

"Cordy looked after us, she took care of us," the girl started, her drawling accent still audible through the tears that had roughened her voice. The man beside her wrapped an arm around her back and she leaned into his comfort.

"Everybody looks after you Fred," he commented kindly, giving her an affectionate smile. "Cordelia did a better job than the rest of us, that's all." He met Xander's eyes. "She wasn't afraid of anything, wasn't afraid to tell you what she thought."

Xander couldn't stop the smile that curved at his mouth as memories rushed to the front of his mind, the many times she had told him _exactly _what he'd done wrong, frequently with advice on how to avoid such idiotic mistakes in the future.

"She loved her friends, even when they didn't deserve it," Harmony chimed in, meeting Angel's sad eyes.

The demon laughed and somehow the sound didn't sound out of place in the somber attitude of the room. "She couldn't sing a note, but she always knew who she was, where she was supposed to be, and what she was meant to do, and she did it beautifully," he said. Xander wasn't sure how the singing related, but he knew the rest of the statement to be absolute fact. If there was one word that could not be applied to Cordelia Chase, it was insecure.

She might have had her moments of weakness in high school, but he knew that there was nothing out there that she didn't believe herself capable of. And if everything he'd heard from Willow was true, she'd found her place helping the hopeless with Angel, willingly accepting painful visions to keep people safe, to save people.

"She was the best of us," Wesley said, his voice muddled by restrained tears. The others nodded in silence, heads bowing unconsciously.

Angel spoke next, his voice firm. "She was our heart."

Xander let out a deep breath. That was really the only response he could muster. Hearing the depth of these people's feelings for the girl he'd loved reminded him that, ultimately, they weren't gathered together that day to merely mourn her death, but to remember her life and the reasons that they had all loved her.

He might not have gotten to meet the amazing person she'd become, but he'd seen through her façade before she'd given it up and he counted himself lucky to be included in this room of people whom she had loved.

And people who had loved her.


End file.
